Is What It Is ain’t what it used to be, and now it will become a permanent past-tense. Tom Leveen and Michael Peck’s spunky little company created 12 years ago in a backyard died in the commendably supportive arms of Fountain Hills Community Theatre after their third move in a year. This family-friendly group had finally spread their arms to embrace harsher and more controversial themes, such as their last-season-ender The Woodsman and their death knell, David Auburn’s Proof. They were never able to establish themselves like their more successful and more specifically alternative cousins, but the charm of their defiant and militant homespun-spin made their often see-saw in quality productions charming, even when they were overwhelmed by the imbalances of overreaching desire and limited means. For their curtain call, IWII mounted a production that had some interesting choices and some that were head-scratchingly maddening. In other words, their Proof contained a lot of what made IWII great and everything that made it untenable.

One thing that worked against Peck’s production was not completely his fault. In being forced to leave your home and set up shop for one week in another’s theatre, set design becomes impossible, especially on the pie-shaped FH Youth Theatre stage. The hard-to-recognize backyard of Robert (Rick Shipman) and Catherine’s (Mandy Nichols-Rose) decrepit Chicago tenement house did not do well in defining the alleyway and the back door to the house, which made a lot of the entrances baffling. However, his pacing work with the actors paid off, and the fact that he was not afraid of longer pauses and uneven concentrations textually supported Catherine’s potential madness and her dealings with her father, his former graduate student Harold (Drew Davis), and her forceful sister Claire (Kendra Ryan).

Nichols-Rose kept the imbalance of Katherine’s mental state obvious through vocal and physical choices, some more obvious than others. Her presentation felt real, and she was in the moment at all times, especially during her dealings with Shipman. In a role not ordinarily offered to him, Shipman proves acting chops beyond his comedic abilities. His Robert is completely matter-of-fact and natural, and while his descent into madness did lean to presentationalism, this may very well have been what Peck was looking for, even if it was not what I was anticipating.

Ryan’s Claire was officious and insidiously helpful, and she did not undercut the character with too much tipping of her hand. She never betrayed the roiling below the surface until the right moment. I disagree completely with Peck and Davis’ choice to present Harold as a typical mathematics nerd. This is one point in the diluted script where playing against type would have been a better mode. Davis’ vocal squeaks and general geekiness played into our expectations, and this script does so much to shatter them that playing to them feels too easy an attempt for laughs and not enough consideration for the dramatic. It is the weakest part to a good production.